IP multicast has traditionally been used as a technology option for one-to-many communications. However, IP multicast may suffer from one or more limitations, including group management, needed router capabilities, lack of QoS (quality of service) support and inter-domain issues.
Recently, Overlay Multicast (OM) has gained some attention. In Overlay Multicast, a basic concept is to move the multicast management (e.g., replication, group allocation, tree modification and the like) from the IP layer towards the application layer by involving end nodes (or special nodes inside the network) in the tree construction. This has led to the construction of hybrid trees having advantages of both IP multicast and OM.
Some conventional hybrid solutions may be based on a combination of OM and native multicast and seek to interconnect the two solutions with little or no consideration for the building of an IP multicast tree. These conventional approaches tend to consider the IP multicast tree as already built or that another native protocol will build the IP multicast tree. Moreover, these conventional solutions may not provide a QoS guarantee inside the domains nor in the inter-domain environment.
Embodiments were conceived in light of the above-mentioned problems and limitations, among other things.